Unido developing 'Pakistan national quality policy'

United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido) is developing 'Pakistan national quality policy' with the objective to discuss the role and benefits of quality infrastructure in Pakistan for socio-economic development of the country. In this connection Federal Ministry of Science and Technology is organising a one-day National Quality Forum (NQF) in Islamabad on November 16 under the Trade Related Technical Assistance (TRTA II) Programme funded by European Union (EU).
The quality infrastructure and its impact on the exports and the economy of the country constitute the objective approach in developing the national quality policy. A focus group meeting on TRTA II programme in collaboration with the Ministry of Science & Technology was held here on Tuesday at a local hotel prior to the intended National Quality Forum in Islamabad. The purpose is to sensitise all relevant institutions for conceptualising national quality policy and secondly in keeping the discussions focused during the national quality forum which would be a high level one-day event.
The focus group meeting held here was aimed at soliciting the discussion material for a future approach towards developing national quality infrastructure and technical regulation framework for improving the economic governance environment of Pakistan. Engr M A Jabbar, Chairman of WTO Committee FPCCI and former Vice President and Chairman of SITE Association of Industry, was also invited to participate in development of recommendations as possible solutions for Pakistan to integrate itself with the global trade under the expressed written and non-written rules to generate its competition level to increase its export trade merchandise.
Talking to Business Recorder, he said the component of TRTA II for developing 'Pakistan national quality policy' was critically balanced objective for consideration of the government and the institutions as stakeholders. Their meaningful participation in focus groups will generate coherence amongst all the parties towards similar objective to encompass technical barriers to trade, its devolved components like sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures together will cover the requirements of buyers to accredit the acceptance of cross border trade of the products entering as exports in other countries from Pakistan.
He said that development of required inputs through discussions in the focus group was meaningful in the sense that public and private sectors were invited to come across for developing the consensus through interactions. He said participants in the focus group meeting held in Karachi included director research, economist and secretariat supporting staff from FPCCI, officials of PSQCA, focal person from National Enquiry point of WTO, Government of Sindh and other federal departments together had a conversation with Martin Kellermann Unido/TRTA II Expert.
A long session from morning to lunch hours generated open discussions leading to possible solutions for Pakistan to come close to the needs of expressed rules of international trading in the paradigm of nutritional, hazardous levels, healthy process and cover ambit of acceptable standards of national, regional and international levels. This may also extend beyond to specifics for industry and merchandise manufacturing which may include processing of food and other consumption requirements as agriculture, manufacturing and service industry have to work in a value chain and as a supply chain towards generating the gross domestic produce of any country.
Martin Kellermann expert in the field from South Africa engaged for the purpose by Unido gave a detailed understanding by referring to the case studies with regard to benchmarking of national quality infrastructure (NQI) and technical regulation framework (TRF).
He divulged upon the assessments he has made about Pakistan and reduced the same to nomenclature these as challenges for Pakistan in bidding to increase its share in international trade, pre-requisites of which the Expert believe is available in way forward. Kellermann in his comparative analysis said that per capita income of Pakistan was at the same level as was of Ethiopia, hence the prosperity of people must be seen through putting efforts to increase the GDP which would eventually raise the prosperity level and improve indicators such as GDP per capita for socio-economic developments.
He said that drive for the change could be looked into by referring to the examples of others while comparing it with South Africa before 1990 and after 1994 when the South Africa borders opened for international trade. He said that old science system in South Africa was reviewed from 1996-2000. The advocacy remained at height forcing the cabinet to approve most of the recommendations forwarded by the parties to the concern and as such South Africa developed the policy in 2002.
He was of the opinion that Pakistan might also revisit its workings for policy developments by checking the success experiences of other case studies. He said that legislations in South Africa, accreditation, metrology, standardisation and all components were revisited for a defined and definite policy in line with the requirements of international trading partners to help in increasing the trade and economy of South Africa.
He also gave examples of CZECH Republic, sphere of influence of Soviet union whereby 23,000 mandatory standards of ghost are under way of substitution with the standards in practice in global trade. He also explained about EU system of management and governance of regulation, testings and other associated fields relevant to the quality infrastructure and quality management of produce for market sales.
Unido/TRTA II Expert, Kellermann talking on the quality infrastructure in Pakistan gave the picture of weaknesses and stressed upon the requirements of improvements including revision of PSQCA act 1996. He also advocated for improving the functional responses of TBT inquiry point in PSQCA, simultaneously recommending government investments in new laboratories and as well as need to improve the relations with industry so that the economy developers also generate the sense of ownership in the national policies. He said that reposition of Pakistan as supplier of quality was the main challenge which Pakistan faced which would also involve need of border controls, a major problem existing in Pakistan.
He strongly advocated for the need to separate regulatory functions from national quality infrastructure service providers. On the common technical regulation approach across all the ministries, he said it was the most probable good choice for policy makers in Pakistan. In the context of Pakistan, he said the missing link was National Quality Policy which must access to all the other policies like trade policy, industrial policy, food safety policy, standards, quality and technical regulations under the umbrella of science and technology.
Engr Jabbar while participating in the discussions said that interventions should be carried forward to generate better outcome and influence the mind of the expert in revisiting his mindset towards the concept of national quality policy to confirm with the ground realities and circumstances surrounding the local issues. Expert needs to generate education and awareness with regard to unwritten rules which he was referring to for acquaintance with the stake holders, he said.
Participating in the open discussion, he said that experts should also try to influence the participants to generate a clear perception about the demarcation between technical regulations and standards because sometimes they were confused with. He further said that scientific and precise divide line had to be educated and put to awareness of the stakeholders due to circumstances surrounding the issue in a developing economy wherein both standards and technical regulations as separate legal entities needed to be embedded in the local system requiring to take care of economic interest in general and in specific.
Engr Jabbar gave full briefing about this issue by giving examples with reference to benchmark consideration of local business environment. He said there was a strong need to support impact assessment before issuance of technical regulation and its applied enforcement. He further said that the same again needed to be assessed in strict reference to the local environment for creating conducive business environment in the needs of the specific circumstances Pakistan was confronting with.
He said that TBT, SPS in which TBT was a former head which had devolved SPS as sub-head in the WTO language as packages sometimes also converged in Pakistan wherein quality infrastructure and its boundaries had yet to be improved to fairly consider any action for enforcement. He said that SPS while simply referring to the adverse affects on health due to aflatoxin generated in the process food had to compare with the TBT references which were nutritional levels. The nutritional level values with knowledge of science also predict the likely generation of adverse level of organism to the adversary of the human and livings.
TBT was a package of WTO agreements for single undertaking and also had its importance due to discussions with regard to its relaxed position not to retard the trade or impede the growth of trade, hence SPS and TBT had to be applied in terms of their real proportion and understanding in the developing economy, he said. He referred to food and process food to be covered by SPS and TBT respectively which altogether needed to define the boundaries of undertakings by different ministries to converge on single plate form.
He said all the participants from public and private sector were well identified and recognised persons with equipment of awareness and knowledge on the issue, hence, the TRA II and its assisted development for Pakistan National Quality Policy was the well identified component to be supported by TRTA since its history of programme from January 2010 to March up-to 2014. He said that today's meeting of the focus group was going to provide a support to the organisation of national quality forum in Islamabad on November 16.
The concept paper developed in this regard is an input towards achieving the objectives of the programme leading to development of Pakistan national quality policy. He said the contents of the national quality policy had covered all the aspects in a single basket, which after the inputs of focus groups and high level consultations in national quality forum would have meaningful accumulation of inputs towards giving practical effect to the development of national quality policy, he said.